Monthly Archives: January 2007

Friday Ark #122

This entry was posted in Bird Blogging Cat Blogging Dog Blogging Entymology Friday Ark Invertebrate Blogging Pet Blogging Weekend Cat Blogging Weekend Dog Blogging on by

We’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and….?

Do link to the Ark every week!

You can find out how to board the Friday Ark at the Arkive page.

Cats

Birds

Dogs

Other Vertebrates

Invertebrates

In Memoriam

  • Bad Kitty Cats: Baby Is Gone… Our Hearts Are Broken: Echo Baby Sauriol October 26, 1988 to January 15, 2007

Didn’t Make It

  • x

Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map.

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey’s Musings. Also, there are more doggies at Weekend Dog Blogging hosted this weekend by Sweetnicks.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 147th edition, 1/14, is up at Pet’s Garden Blog. The 148th edition will be hosted by Enrevanche on 1/21. There are more weekly cats at Weekend Cat Blogging hosted on 1/20-21 by Cat Blogosphere . Do go shout out at The Catbloggers Frappr Map.

Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. The 40th edition is up and hosted by Peregrine’s Bird Blog. The 41st edition will be hosted on 1/25 by Snail’s Eye View.

For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The 16th edition is up at The force that through…. The 16th edition will be hosted at the end of January by The Voltage Gate.

For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat’s Carnival Page, The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users:

Over the past month or so Haloscan started (the end of July) handling of trackbacks has improved though it is still pretty broken for carnival type posts. Now, instead of rejecting every attempt to ping it accepts single pings for a while and then will start rejecting them. I will keep trying to track back to Haloscan boarders but can make no guarantees for any particular week.

Note for Typepad Users:

Typepad continues to behave similar to Haloscan for trackbacks. I been able to get trackbacks to most, if not all, Typepad based boarders. I have to do it one at a time and wait a while in between pings but Typepad does not go into semi-permanent rejection mode like Haloscan.

maria, Please Protect Us From the Fruit Price Gougers

This entry was posted in Economics on by

senator maria cantwell in September 2005:

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., is convinced that the oil companies have artificially increased prices and wants President Bush to have the power to cap gas prices if necessary. She likens the conditions to those that caused the Enron fraud of the electricity market in 2000 and 2001.
…
“My constituents are frustrated. Consumers want to know what we’re going to do about this. Consumers definitely want to know what’s going on.”
Cantwell intends to introduce legislation on Thursday that would give Bush power to investigate price gouging and, if necessary, cap price increases. She discussed her proposal Tuesday at a Senate hearing on the hurricane’s impact on rising energy prices.

From the Sacramento Union, January 17, 2007:

“We may adjust the prices as we discover the full extent of the damage next week, but for now, if you bought an orange at the supermarket for 50 cents, expect to pay a dollar to $1.49 for it,” said Todd Steel, owner of Royal Vista Marketing, which sells California citrus to markets throughout the country.

Ignoring for the moment the ill-conceived idea of giving bush the power to do anything, I wonder just how soon we will hear her complaining about price gouging by orange growers.

Hat tip: The Knowledge Problem

Trains, Planes, Roads and Ships

This entry was posted in Anarchism Constitution Economics Libertarianism Transportation on by

Kip calls senator lautenberg to task for calling for more subsidies for Amtrak:

How much more remedial can one make it: Amtrak loses money because people don’t use it. People don’t use it because people neither need nor want to use it. People are — gasp! — relying entirely on airplanes and roads.

……

So when Lautenberg says, “We cannot depend entirely on airplanes and roads,” what he really means is “I get a warm fuzzy feeling from the thought of having Amtrak, and that’s more important than any other use that you might have for your tax dollars.”

Amtrak, roads, planes (airports), public transit and shipping are all heavily subsidized at the federal, state and local levels. Non-Amtrak trains have been historically heavily subsidized.

I don’t pretend to know which mode(s) of transport would win out without tax subsidies but it is time to find out. Let’s eliminate all the tax subsidies and put the mechanisms in place to assure that the folks using a particular transportation service are paying the full cost per use.

It will take time but I suspect that we will see dramatically different answers rise up than we have seen with the centralized planning of the last 150 years.

An Amtrak like service may or may not be one of the answers.